I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist.

I've decided that art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is, for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it.

I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist.

The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.

I was interested in ideas, not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.

I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.

The curious thing about that moustache and goatee is that when you look at the Mona Lisa it becomes a man. It is not a woman disguised as a man; it is a real man, and that was my discovery, without realising it at the time.